Background Global climate is changing more rapidly than ever, threatening plant growth and productivity while exerting considerable direct and indirect effects on the quality and quantity of plant nutrients. Scope This review focuses on the global impact of climate change on the nutritional value of plant foods. It showcases the existing evidence linking the effects of climate change factors on crop nutrition and the concentration of nutrients in edible plant parts. It focuses on the effect of elevated CO₂ (eCO₂), elevated temperature (eT), salinity, waterlogging and drought stresses, and what is known regarding their direct and indirect influence on nutrient availability. Furthermore, it provides possible strategies to preserve the nutritional composition of plant foods under changing climates. Conclusions Climate change has an impact on the accumulation of minerals and protein in crop plants, with eCO₂ being the underlying factor of most of the reported changes. The effects are clearly dependent on the type, intensity and duration of the imposed stress, plant genotype and developmental stage. Strong interactions (both positive and negative) can be found between individual climatic factors and soil availability of nitrogen (N), potassium (K), iron (Fe) and phosphorous (P). The development of future interventions to ensure that the world's population has access to plentiful, safe and nutritious food may need to rely on breeding for nutrients under the context of climate change, including legumes in cropping systems, better farm management practices and utilization of microbial inoculants that enhance nutrient availability.

Recently, edible films were shown to be an effective strategy for the delivery of functional ingredients, such as probiotics and prebiotics. With that in mind, two soluble fibres (inulin and fructooligosaccharides) were selected as prebiotic elements, in whey protein isolate (WPI) and alginate (ALG) matrices plasticized with glycerol and used for the incorporation of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis BB-12. The results obtained showed that the viability of the B. animalis subsp. lactis BB-12 probiotic strain was maintained within the minimum threshold (10⁶ CFU/g) necessary to act as a probiotic throughout 60 days of storage at 23 °C. The incorporation of prebiotic compounds improved B. animalis subsp. lactis BB-12 viability, with inulin showing the best performance, as it maintained the viability at 7.34 log CFU/g. The compositional characteristics (biopolymer type and prebiotics addition) of the film forming solutions had no significant impact upon the viability of the probiotic strain. The incorporation of probiotics and prebiotics did not modify the infrared spectra, revealing that the molecular structure of the films was not modified. The moisture content and water solubility decreased positively in WPI- and ALG-based films with the addition of prebiotics compounds. Overall, the results obtained in this work support the use of WPI films containing inulin as a good strategy to immobilize B. animalis subsp. lactis BB-12, with potential applications in the development of functional foods.

In the current situation of a constant increase in the atmospheric CO₂ concentration, there is a potential risk of decreased nutritional value and food crop quality. Therefore, selecting strong-responsive varieties to elevated CO₂ (eCO₂) conditions in terms of yield and nutritional quality is an important decision for improving crop productivity under future CO₂ conditions. Using bean and soybean varieties of contrasting responses to eCO2 and different origins, we assessed the effects of eCO₂ (800 ppm) in a controlled environment on the yield performance and the concentration of protein, fat, and mineral elements in seeds. The range of seed yield responses to eCO₂ was −11.0 to 32.7% (average change of 5%) in beans and −23.8 to 39.6% (average change of 7.1%) in soybeans. There was a significant correlation between seed yield enhancement and aboveground biomass, seed number, and pod number per plant. At maturity, eCO₂ increased seed protein concentration in beans, while it did not affect soybean. Lipid concentration was not affected by eCO2 in either legume species. Compared with ambient CO₂ (aCO₂), the concentrations of manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), and potassium (K) decreased significantly, magnesium (Mg) increased, while zinc (Zn), phosphorus (P), and calcium (Ca) were not changed under eCO₂ in bean seeds. However, in soybean, Mn and K concentrations decreased significantly, Ca increased, and Zn, Fe, P, and Mg concentrations were not significantly affected by eCO₂ conditions. Our results suggest that intraspecific variation in seed yield improvement and reduced sensitivity to mineral losses might be suitable parameters for breeders to begin selecting lines that maximize yield and nutrition under eCO₂.